Accused

You do not have to be guilty; you only have to be accused. Careers of inno­cent peo­ple are destroyed every­day by false accu­sa­tions. Hol­ly­wood has made some block­buster movies using this theme (Har­ri­son Ford was mar­velous in one of them). Peo­ple are quick to jump to con­clu­sions, because we use accu­sa­tions to dis­tract our­selves from our own guilt and shame. There is noth­ing new here. The orig­i­nal dynamic began in the Gar­den of Eden. In short, Satan accused God of hold­ing back infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the “Tree of the Knowl­edge of Good and Evil” and “The Tree of Life.” It was implied that God was some­how stingy about what the trees could do for humankind and wanted to keep these things for him­self alone. After much coax­ing, Eve caved into the lie and Adam quickly fol­lowed. (God as “stingy judge” is the dis­tor­tion that con­tin­ues to echo to this day.)

It is no acci­dent that the Ten Com­mand­ments include “not bear­ing false wit­ness.” Peo­ple live and die by infor­ma­tion that is accu­rate or inac­cu­rate. Words really are life and death. Jesus was cru­ci­fied over a twisted impli­ca­tion con­cern­ing a piece of real estate (“destroy this tem­ple and I will raise it in three days”). Truth has no room for com­pro­mise with­out dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences — even eter­nal ones.

A few years ago, a young man on the Inter­net enter­tained an accusatory idea against a gov­ern­ment offi­cial. At first it was a joke, even­tu­ally he was taken by his own fan­tasy. A few years later his accu­sa­tion is con­sid­ered hard fact by nearly forty per­cent of Amer­i­cans. Despite the hard real­ity that a trustable inde­pen­dent research team proved the fan­tasy false, the accu­sa­tion still holds as absolute truth to those unwill­ing to look at the valid evi­dence. (God be mer­ci­ful to this young man’s soul…or what lit­tle of it might be left.)

Truth is the “obvi­ous” fact that has to be sought afresh con­stantly. It is a way of being. As a liv­ing prin­ci­ple, it serves the spir­i­tu­ally coura­geous that are will­ing to do the hard research to get to the bot­tom of any wor­thy issue in ques­tion. There is noth­ing con­ve­nient about truth. It is for the brave and intel­lec­tu­ally hard work­ing — peo­ple unwill­ing to set­tle for innu­endo and accu­sa­tion. The truth will set you free, but you are going to have to work toward IT (Truth as Absolute Being) with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength…“so help you God.”